


Dissolution

by adventurepants



Category: Family Affair
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-03
Updated: 2011-03-03
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adventurepants/pseuds/adventurepants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cissy will always remember it as the loneliest time in her life, the year between losing her parents and going to live with Uncle Bill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissolution

Cissy will always remember it as the loneliest time in her life, the year between losing her parents and going to live with Uncle Bill.

The morning of the funeral is surreal in the most awful of ways. She wakes up feeling empty, like she’s cried as much as she possibly can and now there’s nothing but numbness left. She helps Buffy and Jody get dressed after she gets ready, and then sits them down on either side of her in the living room to read them a story before it’s time to go. She hopes it might take their minds off things, but then the phone rings, and the tone of Aunt Fran’s voice coming in from the kitchen makes Cissy’s ears perk up.

“Bill, it’s your brother’s funeral! …I understand you have responsibilities, but… yes. Yes, I’ll tell them. Goodbye, Bill.”

The three of them sit still as Aunt Fran hangs up the phone and comes into the living room. “Thank you for getting the twins ready, Cissy.”

Cissy nods. “Aunt Fran, who was on the phone?”

“It was your Uncle Bill. He sends his love,” she says, sounding agitated.

“You mean he’s not coming?

Aunt Fran shakes her head quickly. “He’s out of the country, working. He’s not able to get away. I’ll just finish getting ready and we’ll leave for the church, all right?” She turns and heads upstairs, leaving Cissy and the twins alone.

“Cissy, who’s Uncle Bill?” Buffy’s clutching Mrs. Beasley and staring up at Cissy with a puzzled look on her face.

“He’s Daddy’s brother.”

“I never heard of him,” Jody chimes in.

“He lives in New York. And he has to travel a lot, for his job. We haven’t seen him since you were two, that’s why you don’t remember,” Cissy explains. But she doesn’t understand. Daddy always said that he and Uncle Bill did everything together, growing up. That Uncle Bill was the best friend he’d ever had. But now Daddy was dead, and Uncle Bill wasn’t there, and it just didn’t make sense. If he wasn’t there, did he really care about any of them at all?

The funeral is long, and Cissy doesn’t hear a single word that anybody says the entire time. Aunt Fran wouldn’t allow Buffy to bring Mrs. Beasley into the church with her, so she grabs onto Cissy’s arm and holds tight as if she can’t bear not to be holding onto something. Jody hides his face in Cissy’s side, inching closer and closer until he’s in her lap, sniffling into her shoulder.

Aunt Fran leaves them alone during the service, and Cissy is grateful.

Afterwards, back at Aunt Fran and Uncle Harold’s house, there’s a whole parade of people through the living room, telling Cissy and the twins that they’re so sorry, that their mother and father loved them very much.

“Why do they keep saying that?” Buffy asks, her voice small. “We know they loved us.”

“That’s just what people say, Buff,” Cissy answers, running her hand over Buffy’s hair. “They’re just trying to be kind to us.”

“Oh,” Buffy says, and shares a silent look with Jody. It’s true what they say about twins, Cissy’s found. They do carry on whole conversations without saying a single word. She thinks she might have been jealous if they’d been born earlier, but she was nine when they’d arrived—practically a woman. Nearly a decade between them had left Cissy mostly just enamored of these tiny people. She loved them, and she wanted to protect them—especially now.

After a while, the house is emptied of relatives and friends, except for their mother’s three sisters. They’ve been talking quietly in the kitchen together, but Cissy isn’t sure where the uncles have disappeared to. There’s a knock at the door of the guest bedroom Cissy has been sharing with Buffy for the past three nights, and Cissy puts down the book she’s been trying unsuccessfully to read. “Come in.”

Aunt Fran enters the room, looking tired. “Hello, Cissy. I thought I’d help you get your things together, and then we could help Jody with his.”

“Oh,” Cissy says, startled. “I… where are we going?” She tries not to think about what it means that Aunt Fran hadn’t mentioned gathering Buffy’s things. Surely, they wouldn’t…

Aunt Fran picks up Cissy’s suitcase from the floor and places it on the bed. “We’ve talked it over, and we’ve decided that… Buffy will live here with Uncle Harold and me, and… and you’ll be staying with Aunt Helen, and Jody with Aunt Alice.”

“No,” Cissy says, and it comes out as a whisper.

“Cissy, darling, it’s the only way.”

“No!” she says again, louder this time. “You can’t separate us! They need me, I… we need each other.”

“I’m sorry, I truly am. But this is the way it has to be. None of us are prepared to take care of three children.” Aunt Fran dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief, and Cissy tries hard to remember that Aunt Fran has lost her sister, that she’s grieving as well. That they’re lucky to have family who are willing to take them at all.

“But there’s got to be some way that we can stay together,” Cissy says as Aunt Fran opens the closet and takes out the few items of clothing that Cissy had brought over.

“We’ve had a long, difficult day,” Aunt Fran says, voice suddenly sharp. “Let’s not argue.”

It stops Cissy cold, and she knows, without pressing the issue further, that there’s nothing she can do. “At least let me be the one to explain it to them.”

They’re in the other guest room playing halfheartedly together, and they cry and cling to her when she tells them, twin choruses of “No, Cissy, no” muffled against her neck. She cries too, kissing them both and murmuring that it’s all right, it’s all right, and she loves them, and they’ll see each other soon. She hopes it’s not a lie, but she has a heavy feeling right in the center of her chest that makes her think it might be.

It’s barely a few minutes before Aunt Fran is saying, “Come along, Cissy, it’s time to go,” and Cissy does her best to dry her eyes. That stone in her chest sinks lower and lower, and this is all happening so fast—surely they can’t be expected to bury their parents and say goodbye to each other all in the same day?

Cissy finishes packing in a haze, and before she knows it she’s in Aunt Helen and Uncle Richard’s car. She feels sick as they pull away from the curb. _This isn’t right._

She measures distances in her head. She’ll be starting high school with her friends in a couple of weeks, but Buffy and Jody will be going to different kindergartens. She leans against the window and closes her eyes, feeling utterly, desperately alone.

Their parents’ belongings are boxed up over the next week, and Cissy is allowed to come along, to get the rest of her own things. She sneaks a bottle of her mother’s favorite perfume into one of her suitcases. She’s not sure why she hides it—why shouldn’t she have something of her mother’s?—but she buries it under dresses and skirts anyway.

Living with Aunt Helen and Uncle Richard is all right. “It could be worse,” she tells herself, over and over. “It could be much worse, and you should be grateful.” But they don’t seem to have much time for her, and they don’t seem to _care_ very much at all. She cries herself to sleep for two weeks, and no one ever comes to check on her—though she knows that in the quiet house, her aunt and uncle’s bedroom across the hall, they must hear her.

School starts in September, and everything is the same as it ever was. (Except that this year, Cissy has to remind Aunt Helen three times that she needs new notebooks for her classes. She doesn’t ask for new school clothes—she doesn’t want to be any trouble—she just lets out the hems on the clothes she already has, and hopes she doesn’t grow too much taller.) Her friends are very kind to her, but it’s obvious they don’t know quite what to say or how to act around her. Cissy’s different now and they know it, but she wishes they’d just pretend like she wasn’t.

Every weekend, for the first month or so, Cissy asks her aunt and uncle if they could get together with the rest of the family. “Just for a little while,” she always says. “Just so Buffy and Jody and I could see each other.” But they’re always much too busy, they tell her. Soon, they say, but not this week. So she stops trying.

It’s Christmas before she sees her brother and sister again. Aunt Fran smiles and hugs Cissy and wishes her a Merry Christmas, but Cissy’s already looking past her to see the twins. They look like they’ve grown about a foot each, and she quickly swallows the lump in her throat as they run at her and attach themselves around her waist. “Cissy, Cissy! We missed you!”

Cissy bends down to kiss them both before shepherding them over to the living room couch. “Let me look at you,” she says as they sit down. “You’re growing so fast. You’ll be as tall as me before you know it.” She’s not sure what’s making her sound like this, like an adult relative instead of their sister, who’s still just a girl herself. She looks up to see that their aunts have already retreated back to the kitchen, and their uncles to the den. Good. She’d rather be left alone.

“I look the same to me,” Jody says.

“Not to me,” Cissy tells him, reaching out to ruffle his hair. “Oh, I missed you. Are you both all right? How’s kindergarten! How are… how are your new homes?”

Buffy and Jody are sitting on either side of her, and they lean forward to look at each other. They stare silently for a long moment, before looking back at Cissy. “Mrs. Beasley and I don’t like it here by ourselves. And Jody doesn’t even have a Mrs. Beasley.”

Cissy nods and bites her lip. _Don’t cry._ “I know. I don’t like it either.”

“Please Cissy, can we stay together?” Jody begs her.

“I wish we could. I wish we could more than anything.”

“ _Please_ , Cissy,” Buffy says, throwing her arms around her sister again.

Cissy blinks away tears, and makes a decision. “As soon as I’m eighteen, I’ll come for you, all right? I’ll get a job and you’ll come live with me, and we’ll be a family again.”

“But you’re only fourteen,” Jody protests.

“That’s a long time to wait,” Buffy says, and looks down at Mrs. Beasley in her lap.

“I know.” She kisses them each on top of their heads, and holds them close to her. “I know. But you’ll just have to be brave for me, all right? And never forget that I love you. Even if we haven’t seen each other for a while, remember that I love you.”

They press themselves against her side, but they don’t answer her.

The day passes too quickly. Their aunts and uncles are cheerful, laughing together as they exchange gifts, and Cissy wants to scream at them. Instead, she teaches Buffy and Jody to play checkers. Jody drives his new toy truck over the board, upsetting the pieces, but Buffy barely lifts her voice in displeasure.

“Jody!” Cissy says. “Why did you do that?”

He looks up at her, head tilted curiously, as if no one’s cared enough to scold him for anything in all the months since their parents had died. “I don’t know,” he says, and she believes him.

When Aunt Helen and Aunt Alice say it’s time to go, Buffy’s and Jody’s eyes fill up with tears. Cissy wants to beg for more time but she knows it will do no good. She hugs the twins again and tells them she loves them, and they’ll be all right, and to remember what she told them.

Tears spill out of her eyes in the car on the way back, despite her best efforts to stop them. She stays quiet, though, and her aunt and uncle don’t seem to notice.

 _I promise._ She tells herself every night, like a prayer. _I promise we’ll be a family again._


End file.
